


Snow and Low Pressure Situations

by mousapelli



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Slice of Life, Spoilers, Twilight Town (Kingdom Hearts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 00:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousapelli/pseuds/mousapelli
Summary: Roxas and Xion get their first snow day in Twilight Town. Lea is distressed he has to teach them why that's exciting. Post-KH3, side Sora/Riku in the epilogue.





	Snow and Low Pressure Situations

**Author's Note:**

> We've had a ton of snow days this school year already and it's not even March yet. I just wanted somebody from KH to feel my excitement because nothing is better than the 5am phone call that says "just stay in bed, don't come to work."
> 
> Set in Twilight Town where Roxas and Xion are giving being regular teenagers with the Twilight Town gang a shot, and Lea drops by a lot in between keyblade training at the Land of Departure. Also bless this game for letting me have canon phones, texting, selfies, and hashtags. 
> 
> Also Maxie and I had a debate over whether Sora and Riku would know what a snow day was either, so you got an epilogue.

"I mean, what's math even _for_?" Hayner demanded, his melodramatic hand gesture almost knocking over Pence's Dr. Duck. Pence made a lucky grab for his soda, giving Hayner a dirty look. 

Across the circular diner booth, Olette ignored both boys with practiced ease, watching Xion scribbling through a math question. Xion's tongue was sticking out of the corner of her mouth in concentration, brow furrowed, but when she got to the bottom, she smiled proudly. "I did it!"

"Yeah, that's good," Olette approved. She glanced past Xion's paper to Roxas's, the two of them sharing Xion's math book. "Roxas, you can't have negative five."

"Why not?" Roxas demanded. 

"Because it's a word problem about fencing." Olette rolled her eyes. "You can't have negative meters of fence!" 

" _Uuuugh,_ ," Roxas groaned, already erasing the whole thing. He shot a narrow glance at Xion, happily starting the next problem. "This isn't fair! You sucked up all Sora's math memories!" 

"As if he had a bunch of those," Xion snorted softly. "Come on, it's kind of fun when you solve one, right?"

"If I ever do, I'll let you know," Roxas grumbled, dusting eraser shavings across the table. 

"Hey, man, watch my fries!" Hayner protested, trying to dust them back in the other direction, away from his plate. 

"You guys are doing fine, don't get frustrated," Olette encouraged. "For two kids who never went to high school until a couple months ago, I think it's amazing how much you've caught up."

"Thanks, Olette," Xion said. "Sorry you never get your own homework done because you always end up helping us."

"Nah, I don't get much done here anyway." Olette shot a narrow look across the table. "I can't imagine why." Hayner and Pence both pointed at each other, indignant. "Uh-huh. I'm sure you two have this aaaaall done."

"We're eating!" Hayner protested. "We need brain food first!"

"Yeah, you guys better order another basket of fries then," Roxas muttered, making Pence snort his soda up his nose. 

"MAN, why's it so COLD here, huh?" a familiar voice demanded, interrupting their argument. Roxas tilted his head back to grin up at Lea looming over him. "Can'tcha go play teenager somewhere sensible like, I don't know, Agrabah?"

"Weenie," Roxas accused. " _Oof_ ," he added when Lea shoved him further into the booth to make space for himself, knocking Roxas into Xion and Xion into Olette. Roxas pinched Lea's bare forearm. "You know, maybe if you wore some sleeves, you'd have less to complain about."

"Fashion is a war against nature," Lea said, poking Roxas back with one hand while waving the other for the waitress. "Unlike what you two are wearing which is a crime against nature."

Xion and Roxas looked at each other, both of them wearing a weird mis-match of hand-me-downs from Sora and Kairi mostly, along with warmer stuff from their Twilight Town friends now that the weather had turned. Roxas had a couple T-shirts layered over a striped thermal shirt, the sleeve cuffs ragged where they spilled over his hands. Xion was all but drowning in a bright pink hoodie that said "Twilight Town High School" on the front and "GO HOOKBATS" on the back. Ok, so they weren't fashion idols. 

"Warm though," Roxas shrugged. He glanced at Lea's bare arms again. "Hides all my bruises too. What the heck is Terra doing to you guys?"

"Don't even get me started on that guy," Lea said, lowering his voice to a grumble as the waitress approached. "Hi! Coffee. Soooo much coffee."

"Hot or iced?" she asked, bored; Lea leveled a look at her so scathing it should have peeled the gum off the underside of every place in the diner. 

"Anyway, math, huh?" Lea steered the conversation away from his bruises as soon as his coffee and a round of drink refills were ordered and the waitress moved away again. "Still?"

"Always," Roxas complained with feeling. 

"I'm done!" Xion chirped. Roxas reached for her paper, but Olette snatched it out of his reach, scolding him that if he didn't learn it on his own, she'd have to keep reteaching him. 

"Lemme help," Lea demanded, stretching his arm over the back of the both as he leaned into Roxas's space to see the book better. 

"You?" Roxas asked dubiously. "No thanks."

"Hey, glass houses, my friend!" Lea retorted. "I can probably do more algebra than _you_. You are looking at a bona fide apprentice to Ansem the Wise himself!"

"Bet you totally got fired for your excellence at algebra," Roxas said, only half paying attention to him as he showed his newest attempt to Xion. Xion nodded, smiling encouragingly. 

"Ouch! No respect, I tell you," Lea sighed, flicking the back of Roxas's head. "Is teenage sass all you guys are teaching him at your fancy townie school?"

"Nah, he was like that when we got him," Pence reported, slapping Hayner's hand away from his last fries. "So he must have learned it from you, right?"

"No respect at all!" Lea waved his hand in the air. With the hand slung across the back of the booth he poked at Xion's shoulder, making her giggle. "Kids these days."

"Lea, did you know? You can get breakfast here _all day_ ," Xion said, excited. Her excitement over everyday things still cropped up now and again, making even Roxas's mouth quirk up in a small smile. "I want pancakes! We were waiting for you to eat."

"Well, pancakes it is, then!" Lea announced, looking over his shoulder to see if the waitress was on the way back with the coffee or not. "Rox?"

"Sure," Roxas muttered, still scribbling math. "Chocolate chip."

Xion gasped. "You can put _chocolate_ in pancakes?!" 

Full dark had fallen by the time they unfolded themselves from the booth and stumbled out into the street from the cheerfully lit diner. Lea's low tolerance notwithstanding, it _was_ cold, the wind dragging through Roxas's hair spikes like chilled fingertips. 

"See?" Lea demanded as Roxas leaned into him, using him to block the wind. He leaned back, looking at the sky. "And why's it so…pink?" Roxas and Xion frowned at him, but when they tilted their heads back to look too, the clouds did look weirdly pink, as well as the light in general. With the clouds so low and heavy, reflecting back more of Twilight Town's lights than usual, it was also brighter out than it should have been. 

"Means it's gonna snow," Olette told them, wrapping her scarf tighter around her neck. "You guys have seen snow somewhere, right? Have you?"

"Sure," Roxas answered, distracted still looking. He pulled out his phone and tilted it up, snapping a few shots of the sky. None of them captured the pink cast of the sky well, though. Lea leaned into him harder, expectant, and Roxas obligingly flipped the camera to snap a selfie of the two of them. Lea's smug expression lasted until Roxas posted it with the caption "Found a stray" and tagged it ♥notveryorganized . 

"But only when it's already…down?" Xion tried to explain. "Never before it starts. It feels weird, like before a thunderstorm? The air feels weird."

"Low pressure," Pence explained. "Hayner always gets a headache from it."

"No, that's from you guys," Hayner retorted. Another gust of wind whipped down the street towards them, ruffling all of their hair and coats and scarves. "Ugh, that's it, I'm out. See you guys tomorrow!" 

"Bye!" Olette and Pence echoed, waving before going off their own ways. 

"Great idea," Lea agreed, pushing Roxas and Xion in front of him to hustle them up. "Brr! I didn't even know Twilight Town _did_ winter, and I don't much care for it, I don't mind telling you!"

"Didn't you come here all the time, though?" Xion asked, looking from Roxas to Lea. "More than me?"

Roxas thought about that, trying to match up his hazy memories to seasons. "Must have slept through this part last year? And Lea was…" Roxas bit down before he said the words. 

"Away," Lea finished. His arm fell across Roxas's shoulders, a warm weight even though both of them were shivering. "Guess I missed the really cold part. Not like Castle Oblivion had weather! Plus I had this really stylish coat…"

All of them were shivering by the time they stumbled into the small apartment Xion and Roxas were sharing. Aside from being out of the wind, the apartment wasn't that much warmer; Lea wasn't even surprised when he asked what their thermostat was set to and neither of them knew what a thermostat was much less where to find it. Once that scavenger hunt was settled, Xion told the two of them between yawns to have a good night.

"But not _too_ good," she warned knowingly. "It's a school night."

"Only because you weirdoes are going to it voluntarily!" Lea called after her. Her only response was laughter cut off by the soft closing of her bedroom door. "It's like you guys are taking an actual class on sass. Sass class. Hey, are you gonna warm me up or what?"

"You're the fire guy, you idiot," Roxas reminded him, but he hardly resisted when Lea cupped Roxas's face between his warm hands to tilt it up and kissed him hello finally. "Hm. You're staying over, right?"

"You really are too dumb for math," Lea murmured fondly. "I didn't exactly come to Twilight Town for the chocolate chip pancakes."

Roxas at least got them inside his room before Lea got serious about stripping their clothes off. The coldness of his sheets against his back was not pleasant in contrast to the heat of Lea's skin against his own, but everything warmed up quick enough, Lea's hands and mouth more than distraction enough. By the time they'd burned off Lea's coffee buzz, Roxas was pleasantly heavy with exhaustion and satisfaction. 

"Satisfied?" he asked, rubbing fingertips along the ridges of Lea's spine down between his shoulder blades. 

"Mmhmm," Lea muttered into Roxas's collarbone. He was heavy against Roxas's chest, arms slung around his waist to keep them snug together. They had to fit tight together like puzzle pieces to make Roxas's small bed work, but if Lea minded that he never complained. Wasn't like Axel's bed in the Castle that Never Was had been any different. "For now."

Roxas was nearly asleep by the time Lea shifted, rolling onto his side when Lea pushed him and registering only the warm weight of blankets being pulled over top of him. He groped through them without opening his eyes to sling his arm across Lea's chest, and dropped the rest of the way off with the reassuring thrum of Lea's heartbeat under his palm. 

Fewer hours later than he would have liked, Roxas was rudely awakened by Lea shaking him and hissing his name. 

"Rox. _Rox_. ROXAS."

"Whaaat?" Roxas groaned, curling up into an even tighter ball. Lea pinched his nose. "Nngh, fuck _off_."

"Wake up! Look at this!" Lea's voice was excited enough that Roxas cracked open one eye, but only saw Lea sitting up, nose pressed against the window next to Roxas's bed. "It's snowing!" 

"Is that seriously what you woke me up for?" Roxas demanded. Lea grabbed for his wrist and yanked him up to a sitting position. Scrubbing at his eyes to try and get them halfway unstuck, Roxas glanced out the window. The clouds hung low and heavy, the light still weirdly pink, and snow was coming down hard enough to make even the building across the street look hazy. "Yup. Snowing."

"Man, it's really coming down," Lea said. He pressed against the window harder, trying to see down to street level, until his nose was squashed flat. "Wonder if you'll have a snow day."

"A what?" Roxas asked through a yawn, shivering from being out of the cocoon of his blankets. He reached off the side of the bed to grab a T-shirt blindly off the floor and tugged it over his head, another terrible hand-me-down from Sora; it was worn soft and always fell off one of his shoulders, and had a faded logo for a blitzball team inexplicably named "The Coconuts." 

"A snow day! It's already sticking to the…" Lea whipped around suddenly. " _Wait_. You don't know what a snow day is!"

"Uh, is it a day where it snows?" Roxas flopped back down against his pillow. "You seriously had too much coffee again."

"No! A snow day is the _best thing ever_." Lea grinned. He looked ridiculous, his hair spikes flattened from Roxas's fingers and sleeping, the pinkish light from outside tinting his bare skin the same shade. It was pretty cute, although Roxas would rather die than admit it. "Oh man, I can't believe I'm here for your first snow day! You're gonna love it. First you get up and sit in front of the TV in your pajamas with your blanket."

"You'd need some pajamas first," Roxas pointed out. They did have a television, mostly for games, but it was in the living room and definitely too far away from Roxas's warm bed. "Why would I do that?"

"So you can watch the scrolling bar at the bottom and see if your school is on there, of course! So you know if it's cancelled or not."

"Cancelled? School might get cancelled?" Roxas groaned. "I did all that math!"

"Oh my god." Lea rubbed his temples, face scrunched up in pain. "You're the only teenager on the face of the earth who actually wants to go to school, I can't believe this. You can take your stupid homework in the next day, you nerd!"

"Shut up, shitty apprentice." Roxas kicked at Lea's thigh, and Lea slapped at his feet, starting a scuffle that ended with Lea pinning Roxas's wrists beside his head, the blankets a hopeless tangle. 

Lea gave up his advantage after only a second though, flopping down against Roxas's side. Roxas ran fingers through Lea's destroyed hair spikes, eyes half shut, and poached Lea's body heat shamelessly while making no move to help Lea struggling to reach any of the blankets without actually getting up and moving. 

"So what then?" Roxas asked after Lea had managed to drag one over them. It was the fuzziest one, a neon-striped monstrosity that was as ugly as it was warm. "If school's cancelled, what are we supposed to do all day?"

"Sleep in!" Lea said. 

"Sleep in," Roxas repeated, deadpan. "We get up early to go watch TV so it can tell us that we can sleep in."

"Oh you're such a wet blanket, geez," Lea said, aggravated. "It's exciting! When you're supposed to go and it's a surprise that you don't have to, it's fun! Whatever, then you do snow stuff, like have snowball fights or sledding or building snow moogles."

"Mm. Ok." Roxas refrained from mentioning that Lea hated being cold and touching snow for any reason, wanting to go back to sleep rather than argue. "Did you have snow in Radiant Garden?"

"Course we did!" Lea said, indignant like he always sounded when he's defending the honor of his hometown. "And it was always the good kind, just wet enough to pack down for snowballs and sledding."

"Sure it was." Roxas snorted softly at the way Lea's memories of Radiant Garden were always softened into perfection by time and nostalgia. Ansem couldn't have engineered perfect snow on top of everything else, could he? Didn't that guy have bigger stuff to worry about?

"I'll show you sometime," Lea insisted, rubbing his cheek against Roxas's shoulder. "You'll see."

Roxas tried to picture Lea frolicking in the snow, much younger, and couldn't. He turned the subject back to snow cancellation on the television. "When does the magic happen?"

"Couple hours, I guess. When your first alarm's set for is probably good enough."

Roxas had three school alarms set and never actually got up on the first one, so it was pretty painful to drag himself out of bed and put his feet on the cold floor when it went off. Lea was disheveled and overexcited as he threw his boxers back on so they didn't scandalize Xion, and then dragged Roxas out of the room, blankets trailing from their shoulders like really questionable keyblade armor capes. 

Lea trying to sneak anywhere quietly in the dark was the same as Roxas kicking everything in sight on purpose. Xion stuck her head out of her room, looking equally bleary, just as they were settling on the floor in front of their small TV. "What're you two doing?"

"School might be cancelled," Roxas reported. Lea gave both of them a dirty look at Xion's worried gasp. 

"I can't believe I'm stuck with you two," Lea muttered as he found the remote jammed in between two couch cushions and flipped the TV on, clicking backwards to the news channel. Roxas and Xion flopped down against either side of him, Xion still looking anxious and Roxas yawning. "It's called a snow day and you should be _excited_ , get it memorized already—hey, here we go."

The morning show hosts were cheerful as ever, as if 5AM were the same as mid-afternoon, which Roxas hated from the bottom of his replicated heart. At the bottom of the screen was a blue stripe which usually scrolled the weather, but today wasn't scrolling at all. Today it just said "Twilight Town City Schools: Closed."

"Well, that was anti-climactic," Lea complained, nose wrinkled. "So much for building suspense!"

"There's only one school district here, idiot," Roxas pointed out, pulling away from Lea's side to stretch. 

"Oh, I got a text alert about this like an hour ago," Xion piped up, looking down at her phone's notifications, face lit blue from her screen's brightness. "Roxas, didn't you sign up for the schools official notifications?"

"The what?" Roxas asked, then yelped when Lea tackled him to the floor in theatric rage, fingers digging into Roxas's ribs to make him kick and shriek. 

"I'm going back to bed, guys," Xion told them, getting up and leaving them wrestling on the floor. "Call me when there's either breakfast or we're going to make snow moogles."

Eventually Lea and Roxas peeled themselves off the floor, blankets and all. Lea stopped at the bathroom, and when he got back to Roxas's room, he was horrified to find the window wide open and Roxas leaning half out of it, letting in swirls of wind and snow. 

"What are you _doing_?" Lea demanded, clutching his blanket tight around his shoulders. "It's freezing in here again!"

"Trying to get a good shot," Roxas muttered, distracted trying to hold up his gummi phone and keep his balance. He wobbled, and Lea dashed the last three steps across the room to grab the back of his shirt so he didn't go tumbling right out the window. Roxas's camera app was open, framing the glittering, snow-covered street in the soft morning light. "It's really pretty, and I have a photography assignment due by the end of the week."

"Hey, look a lucky emblem!" Lea chirped, then laughed when Roxas jerked and banged his head on the underside of the window. He wasn't laughing a second later when Roxas scooped up a handful of wet snow from the sill and shoved it down the inside of Lea's blanket. 

*****

"Aaaagh!" 

Sora's shout snapped Riku awake and he was pushing up to his elbows already by the time he realized there was no danger, just Sora up against his pillows yelling at his gummi phone. 

He flopped back down with a groan. " _Sora_. This is why we have a no phones in bed rule."

"I can't sleep!" Sora complained. He shoved the phone in Riku's face, making him squint against the glare of it. "Look at this crap! Roxas and Xion have a snow day!"

Riku's eyes adjusted enough to make out a post from Roxas of a snow-covered Twilight Town, tagged ♥snowday ♥suckitislandtrio. In the shot, Roxas and Xion, bundled up in a mismatch of borrowed snow gear, were standing proudly next to a snow moogle taller than they were. To their right, Lea had his arm slung around a snowman with an emoji-style angry frown and an X marked across its face. The first comment was Isa telling Lea to go fuck himself. 

Riku had to chuckle, in spite of the time (damn between-world time changes) and his dazzled eyeballs.

"Aww, I want a snow day," Sora said jealously, taking his phone back. He looked out their star-shaped window with a frown, as if he could make the Mysterious Tower snow on command. "Whatever that is. I guess they don't go to school? No fair!" 

"You don't go to school _at all_ ," Riku groaned, burying his face in his pillow. "Put that down and go to sleep!"

Sora heaved a sigh like it was a huge chore, but dropped his phone on the bedside table with a clunk and squirmed deeper under the blankets. He flopped against Riku's back, making Riku grunt at the temperature difference between their skin until Sora's started to warm back up again. 

Riku waited, even though he could feel the pull of sleep trying to drag him back down, until Sora's breathing had evened out, the warm puff of it against his shoulder steady and slow. Once he could feel the edges of Sora starting to dream, brushing up against his consciousness like the ocean tide rising gradually up the beach, he let himself drop into the dream as well, deftly changing its course as he went. He held his destination firm in his heart as he fell, the crunch of ice under his feet, the glitter of starlight on snow, and the wind floating snatches of the song that the underside of Riku's heart was always humming. 

He'd give Sora a snow day, all right.


End file.
